Vanadium Recommended Settings

Vanadium is the default browser that is included with GrapheneOS. The Chromium-based browser includes a number of patches which help improve the security and privacy of the WebView used by other apps.

Among the numerous privacy and security enhancements listed in their documentation, Vanadium notably includes a built-in content blocker and disables JavaScript Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation by default, both of which can be toggled on a per-site basis.

Configuration

As explained in their documentation, Vanadium prioritizes better privacy- and security-enhancing defaults to avoid users making themselves stand out by opting into non-default settings.

You might, however, consider configuring the following privacy-related settings, all of which can be found in the app Settings → Privacy and security.

  • Select Close tabs on exit

  • Select Open external links in incognito[1]

  • Select Lock Incognito tabs when you leave Vanadium


  1. With this setting enabled, all links from other apps, custom tabs, search intents and share intents will open in incognito tabs. â†Šī¸Ž

Last edited by @jonah 2025-05-06T23:16:43Z

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@celenity has a guide on Vanadium, here are some things about it that I thought were notable:

  • Save passwords → :cross_mark: (You should not save info in your browser like this for security reasons, use a dedicated password manager like Bitwarden or Proton Pass instead)
  • Auto Sign-in → :cross_mark:
  • Save and fill payment methods → :cross_mark: (You should not save info in your browser like this for security reasons, use a dedicated password manager like Bitwarden or Proton Pass instead)
  • Manually verify every time you pay using autofill → :white_check_mark:
  • Privacy → Cross-origin referrer policy → Disable cross-origin referrer :white_check_mark: (If this causes you any issues, you could also set this to Reduce cross-origin referrer)
  • Privacy → Improve search suggestions → :cross_mark:
  • Security → Always use secure connections → :white_check_mark:
  • Content → Background sync → Blocked :cross_mark:
  • Ask where to save files → :white_check_mark:
  • Automatically open PDFs → :cross_mark:
  • #android-open-pdf-inline → Enabled
  • #back-forward-cache → Disabled
  • #enable-parallel-downloading → Enabled
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